Mo Salah, animal lover, tops coverage of Egypt in the foreign press: Displacing MbS’ visit to Cairo from the global headlines is Liverpool star Mohamed Salah coming out to condemn a controversial — and unconfirmed — proposal to export our nation’s stray cats and dogs to countries that use them for food. The story is trending everywhere — even the BBC has picked it up.

The government has stepped up fines for citizens who build illegally on agricultural land, but the poor say they have nowhere else to go, Lena Masri and Ali Abdelaty write for Reuters. According to the newswire, illegal construction on farmland has gone up 40% annually since the 2011 uprising at a time where Egypt is in desperate need to plant its own crops to feed its rapidly growing population.

The Grand Egyptian Museum will become the world’s largest museum dedicated to a single civilization, Salma Islam writes for the Los Angeles Times. The new museum in Giza will showcase artifacts never shown before to the public, and features state-of-the-art facilities vital for the artifacts’ preservation. The museum’s ambitious plans come at a cost of USD 1.1 bn, however, which is financed by two Japanese loans.

Egypt’s efforts to curb population growth do not address the “root causes” of the issue, including economic inequality, Victor Cabrera writes for the Media Line. Recent policies designed to incentivize family planning are “reasonable,” but these must be paired with reforms to “liberalize and diversify” the country’s economy, according to Steven Mosher, president of the Virginia-based Population Research Institute. “It’s not just simply about economic growth; it’s about the distribution of that growth,” says Queen’s University Professor Geography and Planning, Mark Rosenberg. According to Rosenberg, economic growth “has not been effectively transferred to Egypt’s poorer classes.”